Still Life Quill Analysis

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Still Life With a Skull and a Writing Quill was made by Pieter Claesz in 1628. Claesz used oil paints on wood as the medium. The artwork is now part of a collection at the Metropolitan of Art in New York. Pieter Claesz is one of the most celebrated still life painters from the period. Claesz is particularly admired for his skill at painting, with a restrained palette, simple still lifes consisting of objects that seem to be simultaneously both the random product of a casually abandoned breakfast table and a brilliantly arranged work of art completely controlled, carefully composed, and beautifully executed. The objects in his pictures became increasingly palpable by virtue of his ability to depict them as though seen through atmosphere and …show more content…
The magic of still life paintings is that they can show us a new way of looking at the ordinary objects around us. Once they are placed into a specific arrangement and then captured in paint, ink, pastel, or any other medium - the objects take on a whole new meaning. They are imbued with a life beyond the ordinary. Their existence becomes recorded in time. The objects chosen for a still life painting often have a special meaning, either on a personal, cultural, societal, religious or philosophical level. The way that the objects are depicted can evoke a wide variety of emotions, depending on their arrangement, as well as the lighting, color choice, and handling of the paint. These are all things to take into account when viewing a still life artwork. A Haarlem artist became well-known for his still-lifes featuring a limited palette. An example of a still life painting would be from Pieter Claesz. His compositions acquired increasing elegance, broadness and nonchalance as the years passed. One of his paintings, Still Life With a Skull and a Writing Quill, held a lot of meaning while he was painting it. In this painting, for example, besides using brown and green, he only used a dash of blue for the ribbon of the watch. He needed no more colour than that to make it look true to life. Nevertheless, the objects in his still lifes rarely overlap. For Pieter Claesz, the principal aim was to render the materials and catch the reflected light as accurately as